Official Report: search what was said in Parliament
The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
The Official Report search offers lots of different ways to find the information you’re looking for. The search is used as a professional tool by researchers and third-party organisations. It is also used by members of the public who may have less parliamentary awareness. This means it needs to provide the ability to run complex searches, and the ability to browse reports or perform a simple keyword search.
Searching by different views
The web version of the Official Report has three different views:
- Report: this is the whole Official Report for a particular meeting of a committee or Parliament
- Item of business: this is each individual agenda item in an Official Report. For example, Portfolio Questions would be the item of business in a Meeting of the Parliament report
- Contribution: this is each time someone has made a spoken contribution to a meeting.
Depending on the kind of search you want to do, one of these views will be the best option. The default view is to show the report for each meeting of Parliament or a committee. For a simple keyword search, the results will be shown by item of business.
Search by MSP
When you choose to search by a particular MSP, the results returned will show each spoken contribution in Parliament or a committee, ordered by date with the most recent contributions first. This will usually return a lot of results, but you can refine your search by keyword, date and/or by meeting (committee or Chamber business).
We’ve chosen to display the entirety of each MSP’s contribution in the search results. This is intended to reduce the number of times that users need to click into an actual report to get the information that they’re looking for, but in some cases it can lead to very short contributions (“Yes.”) or very long ones (Ministerial statements, for example.) We’ll keep this under review and get feedback from users on whether this approach best meets their needs.
Searching by keyword
There are two types of keyword search:
- A keyword search without quotation marks will look for every instance of each word used and rank the results by frequency and proximity. It will also include variants of the keywords using “porter stemming”. This is when the search looks for the “stem” of a word regardless of its ending. So, for example, a search for [salmon farm] will return each instance of “salmon” and each instance of “farm” as well as potentially including results for “farms”, “farmed” and “farming”.
- A keyword search with quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase used. So, for example, a search for “salmon farm” in quotation marks will only return instances of that exact phrase.
Combining search filters
If you select an MSP’s name from the dropdown menu, and add a phrase in quotation marks to the keyword field, then the search will return only examples of when the MSP said those exact words. You can further refine this search by adding a date range or selecting a particular committee or Meeting of the Parliament.
More complex keyword searches
It’s also possible to run basic Boolean searches. For example:
- a search for “salmon farm” AND “Loch Lomond” will return only results which include both exact phrases
- a search for “salmon farm” NOT “Loch Lomond” will return results for “salmon farm” but exclude results which also include “Loch Lomond”
- a search for “salmon farm” OR “Loch Lomond” will return all results for “salmon farm” and all results for “Loch Lomond” regardless of whether they appear together
Searching by date
There are two ways of searching by date.
You can either use the Start date and End date options to run a search across a particular date range. For example, you may know that a particular subject was discussed at some point in the last few weeks and choose a date range to reflect that.
Alternatively, you can use one of the pre-defined date ranges under “Select a time period”. These are:
- Current session (all Official Reports since the current sessions started)
- Last 6 months
- Last 12 months
- each of the previous sessions of Parliament. (Selecting the information icon above the “Select a time period” menu will give you the exact dates for each session.)
- All sessions
- You can also choose to select a custom date range, although adding a Start or End date will mean the search automatically defaults to this option.
If you search by an individual session, the list of MSPs and committees will automatically update to show only the MSPs and committees which were current during that session. For example, if you select Session 1 you will be show a list of MSPs and committees from Session 1.
If you add a custom date range which crosses more than one session of Parliament, the lists of MSPs and committees will update to show the information that was current at that time.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
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Displaying 893 contributions
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Education, Children and Young People Committee
Early Learning and Childcare: 1,140 Hours
Meeting date: 25 May 2022
Graeme Dey
There seems to be a pressing need for genuine partnership working on the matter, but it is lacking at the moment.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 May 2022
Graeme Dey
The response of the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills to the article in The Times indicated that there might be shortcomings in the legislation in England in relation to the oversight of such places. It is not unreasonable to suggest that, down south, there might be a push to clamp down on them in the short to medium term. If that leads to an upsurge in applications for such placements from England while the primary legislation is going through the Scottish Parliament, are we geared up to cope?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 25 May 2022
Graeme Dey
Do we have the capacity to deal with it?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Early Learning and Childcare: 1,140 Hours
Meeting date: 25 May 2022
Graeme Dey
That reflects positively on the Scottish Government.
Jonathan Broadbery, what is your view of how the process works in practice?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Early Learning and Childcare: 1,140 Hours
Meeting date: 25 May 2022
Graeme Dey
I appreciate that.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Scottish Attainment Challenge Inquiry
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Graeme Dey
Cabinet secretary, I am one of the majority of members of the Scottish Parliament who very much welcome the funding that is going to the 23 other local authorities and will reach the 59 per cent of youngsters who were not previously captured by the approach. However, I am keen to get an assurance that the money will be accompanied by access to the gathered knowledge that we now have about what works.
I was very struck by the sessions that we have had with teaching staff from the west of Scotland. I found them incredibly positive about the work that is being done. However, I note that most of the knowledge has been amassed in the west of Scotland. We have the regional improvement collaboratives for sharing best practice, but I am looking for some assurance on how that best practice—the gleaned knowledge—will be made available to the other local authorities that have not had the opportunity up to now, other than through individual schools and their pupil equity funding. That is important so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel but can capitalise on the best practice and what we know works. Within that, there is a question about the role of Education Scotland.
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Graeme Dey
You are absolutely right about that, but do you recognise the risk that, if the proposal was accepted, we could have fewer opportunities than are required to place the children now?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Graeme Dey
Thank you for indulging me, convener.
I am looking at the proposed amendments from the commissioner’s office, many of which make perfect sense in the context of the legislation that is coming down the track. However, I want to pick up on one practical point—this is not a hostile question. You say that any care home that accepts young people must be
“registered, regulated and inspected by the Care Inspectorate as a care home for children and young people”,
and must have
“a recent ‘adequate’ inspection report.”
We would all agree that that is fundamental, but it is not practical at the moment, because we are still in the pandemic and there will probably be a backlog of inspections. In fact, what you propose, with the best of intentions, could make the situation worse because, if insufficient numbers of homes met that particular criterion, there would be an issue about where to place the children, full stop, would there not?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Graeme Dey
That is my point. Were you not having a dialogue before then about what progress in this area would look like?
Education, Children and Young People Committee
Subordinate Legislation
Meeting date: 18 May 2022
Graeme Dey
Would the element of access to advocacy services not be a step forward?
